every mountain, every valley
by ambivia
Summary: There's a Natsu-sized, Natsu-shaped hole in her life, and nothing else fits. —nalu, modern au.


**notes—** Warnings and extended rambling in the end notes.

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 **every mountain, every valley**

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 _all i ever learned from love_  
 _was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you._

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It hurts, and she breathes. It hurts, and she curls up in an empty bed. It hurts, and she squeezes the blankets harder between her fingers, tighter in her fists. It hurts, and it hurts, and it never stops hurting.

Her father is the first one to knock. He walks after waiting in a minute in her silence (well, her wordless reply, because who ever said she could cry quietly). He sits down by he, the bed dipping, and rubs slow circles against her shoulders.

It makes her cry harder. Louder, definitely.

He doesn't have anything to say to her, but just the fact that he's there, that he's trying to make her feel better — that he understands he won't be able to, _nothing_ will, nothing _can_ right now — should mean the world. But it doesn't. She can't register it. All that registers is a deep-seated hurting.

After the initial hurt comes denial.

"Lucy, Lucy—" Erza's voice is quiet on the phone, cracked, rough, and it's too obvious she's just finished a bout of crying herself. "Lucy, _please_ —"

"It doesn't make sense, he wouldn't— He's not the type, Erza, you know that, everyone knows that. N-Na— He would never do that, Erza, come on, think about it..."

She goes on like that, tries to rationalise it, and all she manages in the end is to make Erza cry.

Then it's Gray's turn, and it's definitely the worst. Erza may have been the big sister but Gray was essentially the best friend and rival and brother all rolled into one. She hasn't left bed, hasn't curled out of her fetal position, buried in blankets, pillow damp and stained with mascara, so all she can do is call him.

By then, the denial has turned into anger, and the first thing Lucy does when Gray picks up is start shouting.

"How _dare_ he, how _fucking_ _ **dare**_ _he_ —" And it's not doing either of them good. The tears burn her cheeks, and Gray's voice breaks up on every third word. But soon enough, Lucy's just ignoring him, just shouting into the phone, and she's hysterical. "Natsu, that bastard, how fucking dare he— He knew, he _knew_ we needed him, and he fucking LEFT US! HE _LEFT_ US!"

Her voice is shrill and her throat aches. But she has to fill the silence, the silence that Gray's surrounded in, because he's the one who saw him last. And somehow, Lucy's anger turns from the man she loves to one of her dearest friends, and she distantly she's aware that she's shouting at him now, accusing _him..._

"You saw him last night, you _saw_ him before he went home, Gray, what the fuck?! WHAT THE FUCK, GRAY?"

She makes Gray cry, too.

This time, it feels good though. In a vindictive sort of way.

It doesn't, it feels awful really, but she needs others to suffer with her, or what's the point? What's the point? What's the point of any of it?

By the end of the day, she's cycled through to depression, and she's stuck there. Her voice is so hoarse she can't speak. Her head pounds with a headache from dehydration, and there's nobody left to call, nobody left to try pour herself into, leave herself empty with.

Lucy is left with one number, and an answer machine.

She dials Natsu's number.

Of course he's not picking up. He'll never pick up again.

Waiting is surreal. She keeps expecting — hoping, _begging God_ — that it's all some hoax, some sick sick prank, and he's gonna pick up the phone with his usual 'Hey Lucy, what's up?'.

And of course, of course, and she knows to expect it— of course, Natsu does not pick up.

 _"Hey hey, you've reached the great Salamander Natsu-sama! I am busy hunting dragons and dating princesses, please leave a message and I shall see if you are worth getting back t— Hey~ Lucy, give that back, give me back the— Hahaha, Lucy, come on, so mean!~"_

Her voice. _"This is Natsu Dragneel. I don't know why you're calling my idiot boyfriend but please leave a message and I'll make sure he calls you back."_

Lucy waits to hear his voice again even though she knows it's not coming.

 _Beep._

It's... weird.

Now that she's talking to him, or to his phone, it's... She has nothing left to say. She's given all her words away.

Lucy is empty.

"...Natsu." It's the only word that comes to mind. "Natsu. Natsu. Natsu. I don't understand, Natsu. Why aren't you picking up? Why aren't you here, why aren't y-you here with us? Natsu, where did you go? You bastard, you cowardly lying bastard, you said we'd graduate together, you promised you'd— You promised, you _promised me_ our future, and now you take that back?

"Natsu, where are you? Why did you... Why did you... Why'd you do that, Natsu? Babe, why'd you do it, I need you here, we _needed_ you here, I don't get it, I don't get it, I don't get it..."

She's crying into the phone before she knows it. It's the worst bout of the day, painful and quiet and burning and all trembles and caught breathes. It hurts. God, Lucy _hurts_.

"We walk past that bridge every day, every single day, to school, back from school, into town, to your karate dojo, to Gray's house, to the gym, to the park, the movies... I loved that bridge. You told me you loved me on that bridge, I thought you loved that bridge too — I thought you loved me too. I'm so fucking confused, you bastard.

"I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't fucking get it. Natsu, it's not like you, they're all telling me it's true but I know it can't be because it's not like you..."

She's whispering now, cradling the phone against her ear like a lifeline.

A _lifeline;_ the idea makes her sick to her stomach.

"Natsu, it's not like you, and they're telling me you're dead, they're saying you jumped, and I don't know how to believe it because you are the last person in the world who would k-kill themselves. You are the last person in the world who would just leave your friends to ask why for forever and jump. You're the last person in the world—

"Natsu, it's not you, please, please, please, I don't know how to lose you, I don't how to— I don't know, Natsu, please! Just come back, please, _please_. Please undo it, please, I'm just—

"What the fuck made you do it, huh? Why did you— WHY DID YOU DO IT!? What made you think for a second that we would be okay? That the people you left behind aren't gonna be wondering for forever why you did it, what made you do it— _Please fucking tell me because I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU KILLED YOURSELF, AND NOW I HAVE TO LIVE WITHOUT YOU._ NOW WE ALL HAVE TO LIVE WITHOUT YOU. And we don't fucking know how! I don't know _how_ to without you, idiot!

"You bastard, I hate you, how could you—... I love you, please, I love you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I couldn't stop you, I'm sorry I didn't know, I'm sorry, I love you, please come back, please come back, _please come back to me, baby, please, p-please,_ _ **please**_..."

That is how her father finds her when he knocks on the door again. Crying into her phone, shaking uncontrollably, begging a dead boy to return to her.

"He's only nineteen," she cries when her father hugs her close, expression grim. "He's only nineteen, Dad, he's only nineteen, I don't understand, I don't get it..."

Sometimes, Lucy has learned, there is nothing to understand. Sometimes, mistakes just happen.

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At the funeral, Igneel breaks down during the speech and has to step outside.

His little sister takes over. Wendy isn't crying. She's not even holding back tears, she just looks numb. Reading from the paper in a monotone voice about how loved her brother was, how kind, how brave, how selfless. It's terrifying seeing her like that, but it brings into perspective just how many lives the man she loved manage to destroy by leaving.

At the end, Wendy crumples up the paper and glances back at the coffin. Closed casket. They had to fish him out of the river, after all.

The words are leaving her lips before she can help herself— "I'm sorry, Natsu-san, I love you, I need you, please come back, I need my brother, you left too _soon_ —"

But he can't, and Wendy has to sit down dry-eyed, expression blank, staring absently ahead as Gray walks up to give his eulogy.

They asked Lucy. She couldn't. She has no words left. She's empty.

Half of Gray's speech goes over her head. talking about how stupid Natsu was. How clever with people, how loyal to his friends. How lucky he was to know him, even for the couple years he did. How lucky he was to have grown up with that asshole as a neighbour—

When he mentions the shared childhood, the tears Erza's holding back start falling, Lucy can see her. She doesn't try to wipe them away, but her lips tremble as they're pressed into a thin line and her eyebrows come together as if she's breaking apart under some overwhelming weight.

It must be weird, Lucy thinks, to grow up with someone and realise that when you are thirty, they will always be nineteen.

"Natsu was more than my best friend," Gray continues, voice shaking. You can tell he's about to lose it himself but he's trying so hard, _so hard_ , to keep it in, to finish this speech, because he owes Natsu that. "He was, for most of my life, my only friend. And I couldn't have asked for more. He was the brother I never wanted." Some people laugh at that. "He was the friend I never deserved, but got anyway. I was lucky to have—" A shuddering breath, a great sniff and a heavy swallow as he fights back an impending breakdown. "I was lucky to have the chance to learn firsthard what he had to teach.

"Natsu was a big proponent of being yourself, unashamedly. Of being 'enthusiastically you'." Gray rolls his eyes at the phrase, at that stupid nonsensical phrase Natsu always used when anyone tried to put him down. "To live as fully, as far, as much as you could. To be unabashedly excited about every day."

Gray pauses, and Lucy knows he's at the end of his speech.

He starts crying before he can get the words out, and Lucy can see him cursing himself out for it, a bittersweet smile tugging at his lips. "If he was here, I could tell you exactly what he'd be saying. He'd take one look at the wooden coffin, one look at the cremation apparatus behind me, and he would— God, what an idiot, he's say, "I'm getting fired up!"

Lucy does laugh at that. It's so true. That's exactly the kind of poor-humour inappropriate joke Natsu would make.

Gray has to try three times to get his last line out. "I'm sorry to have lost my best friend. I'm sorry the world lost him when he had so much more to show it. I'm sorry Wendy lost her brother, that Igneel lost his son, that Erza lost her best friend, that— that Lucy lost her boyfriend... I'm sorry he's gone. I'm sorry, I'm just really sorry.

"But I-I'm thankful that, out of everyone in the world, _I_ got to have the privilege of pissing this asshole off every day. And God knows, wherever he is right now, he's laughing at me for saying that so genuinely... Such a jackass."

He nods his head, wiping uselessly at his tears, shoulders slumped as he walks back to his seat.

They sing a song for him, then presumably cremate him like planned. Lucy doesn't know. She ran out as soon as Gray was done.

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"Lucy." A knocking at her door. "Lucy, come out here, these's someone here to see you."

She doesn't want to get out of bed, doesn't want to do anything, but she makes herself push the blankets off and shuffle across to her bedroom door. "Dad?" she asks blearily. "What is it?"

"Come downstairs. You... You need to see this."

Waiting for her in the living room is...

Lucy can't help it, she can't help screaming. "You! _You!_ What the hell are you doing here, y-you're d-d-d—!"

Natsu turns around and grins at her, broad and bright. "Hey, Lucy! What's up?" He leans forward. "You didn't really believe that crap, did you? Come on~ _me?_ Yeah, right. I'd never do something like that, babe, you know that."

Shaking, she walks towards slowly; she can't believe it, can't believe he's here in front of her.

"Everyone said y-you... That you jumped off the... bridge..."

He takes her hands in his own and leans down, raising an eyebrow disbelievingly. "Why the hell would I ever kill myself? I love my life! I _love_ you—"

"I know that, I know that, Natsu—" She can't control her face, the tears come unbidden in the same way as the grin does, damp and beaming. "I'm so happy, I thought I'd lost you, I thought you'd left me..."

"I'd never leave you, Lucy!" He laughs, pulling her into his arms. His hot to the touch. "I'm here to stay, I promised, didn't I?"

She nods into his chest, enjoying the heat of his arms. It's burning around her, enveloping her in a sweltering heat. The air in the room feels steamy, Lucy thinks she's sweating but she doesn't want to step back into cool relief, she wants to stay wrapped in his arms where she's warm and safe and _home_.

"Lucy, why would I ever leave?"

She shakes her head, burrowing into the crook of his neck. "I know, I was silly—"

"Why, Lucy?"

"It's okay, Natsu—"

"Why, Lucy, _why_?"

She blinks, perturbed, before pulling back to look up at him. "Natsu, what—?" But she can't finish the sentence because instead of the face of the boy she loves, there's a nightmare.

She gasps, pulling away with wide eyes. It's like he's on fire from the inside out, a hole burned clean through his cheek through which she can see his teeth up to his cheekbones, his skin turning black and charring away, melting into flesh, down to bone, until he's half Natsu and half burned skull.

"N-Natsu—!"

"Why'd you do it, Lucy?" he groans, looking horrified. The heat in the room is boiling at her skin; she feels like her flesh is on fire. "Why'd you let them do it, Lucy? Didn't you know I was coming back? Didn't you believe me?"

He reaches out to her, the flesh on his hand all burned away, just the steaming curve of white bone reaching towards her. She shakes her head hysterically, trying to back up but her legs won't let her—

"Why'd you let them do it, Lucy? Why'd you let them burn me? Why, Lucy?!"

He looks angry now, and she doesn't feel safe, she feels like the house is crumbling around her, melting in the blistering heat, turning her skin red and raw, peeling away at the layers of her body.

"WHY, LUCY? WHY? _WHY!?"_

Why? Why what?

"Why, Lucy?!"

"WHY, WHY, _WHY_ —"

"Lucy, Lucy, _Lucy, wake up, **Lucy**_ —" She comes to, drenches in cold sweat and panting like she's run a marathon. She's in the cool shade of her bedroom, bedsheets strewn around her violently, her father peering down at her through the darkness. "Lucy, oh, Lucy," he's murmuring, sitting down by her side and rubbing her between the shoulders just like she likes. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Lucy, I don't know why—"

She starts, staring up at him, chest still heaving. "D-Dad, what..."

He grimaces at her. "You were screaming in your sleep. Saying 'why'. Over and over again, just 'why'."

She tries to take in the information, but she can't. All she can see is Natsu's living body burning in front of her, the fires of his cremation burning down the house, with no reasons anywhere wherever she looks. Her dad continues comforting her best he can, voice calming and hushed, but the nightmare in her head is just beginning. At least that world made sense, after all. Here, there's nothing but questions: nothing but an empty, answerless, echoing _why_.

"Sorry for waking you..." she eventually whispers into the darkness, trembling uncontrollably. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to, I'm sorry..."

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She rubs at her temples, and pulls the cup of coffee towards her.

She can't eat or drink in her apartment, it always feels too empty — she was supposed to move in with Natsu this year, after all. But they sold his apartment, boxed up all his things and drove them home where she can only guess they're gathering dust in his empty room. So her father instead bought her this small studio apartment at the last minute. It's far more than a student can afford, but he went ahead with it anyway. Special circumstances. He understood.

She can't eat or drink in her apartment, though, so she's sort of limited to two meals a day. One right after morning classes end, and then a late lunch around four. Lunch today was a pesto and olive panini; something he would have hated, probably called it rabbit food or something.

She meets Erza for lunch, sometimes. When the girl can find time between her studies and her part-time job and her tutor group and her boyfriend. Erza has an established life in the city, after all, she has people waiting for her, she has responsibilities to come back to. It's nice that Lucy can fit into that jam-packed life, even just occupying a small space. It brings a sense of normalcy to her routine — a sense of returning to some previous status quo.

With Gray, it's not that easy. She hasn't really spoken to him much at all in the past year, hasn't been able to without seeing him give Natsu's eulogy. And she's pretty sure that every time he hears her voice, to him it's like she's accusing him of letting Natsu die all over again. They never really patched it up after that last poisonous conversation.

Lucy isn't really all that sure if she'd be able to apologise for saying those things to him, given the chance. She understands that it isn't fair to blame him, that he couldn't have done anything, that none of them had any idea — but that doesn't stop her mind from trying to.

It's awful, but Lucy can't find it in herself to forgive him, even when he didn't do anything wrong.

The last time she was home, five months ago, she saw Wendy, and honestly the girl seemed to be doing okay, all things considered. Igneel's been in weekly therapy, and sometimes takes his daughter along. But it isn't the first time they've lost someone from their family, and they seem to be able to handle it alright.

Of course, it was later that her dad told her how suicide rates spike at a school after one kid's done it, and how Wendy was accepted to hospital for 'accidental overdose' late last year.

Still, could be worse. She could have succeeded.

Lucy takes a sip of her coffee, continuing to gaze out of the window absent-mindedly. She does that a lot nowadays, just sit there absent-minded. Her dad wanted her checked out for depression, wanted her to sign up for bereavement therapy at least, but honestly, she's just fine. The truth is, there's not really much of her left to feel anything at all. Sometimes, that's how she thinks, anyway.

Because it's, more than anything, just empty without Natsu there. Lucy feels empty.

When he left, he didn't just take himself with him. He didn't just choose to leave, and walk out. He took every tiny stitch he'd sewed into the life of every single person he'd affected in all of his nineteen years, and tore them out as roughly as he could. He cut holes in fabrics that had no spares, punched holes in walls that can't be repaired; he took all those things with him, too, and fucked off to wherever it is he went, and left them all there with pieces missing and bloody.

Natsu made a promise for the future, he made a promise to the world to exist in it when he agreed to live his life the way he did, and then he took that and burned it all up and stole Lucy's future away from her like it was second nature.

She's tried to forget it. Tried to forget him. She doesn't _want_ to, of course she never wants to — but it's become unbearable to live without him, you know? It's a dull throb that never, ever goes away. Not when she accidentally cooks too much food for herself, not when she meets someone new and can't find the words to explain why there's so much of her missing, not when she's doing laundry and she finds his old shirts, shirts he lent her without a second thought, more of him stitched all across her life like patchwork on a blanket.

She's tried to forget him, and all he gave her, but it's impossible. Because when someone is so huge in your life, when they take up so much space, you can't fill it up with anything else when they leave. There's a Natsu-sized, Natsu-shaped hole in her life, and nothing else fits. Everywhere she _looks_ , it's there, and she can't move past it because it's everywhere, always demanding 'why', always asking questions that she will never have the answer to.

When someone kills themselves, all you're left with is a bunch of questions that drive you crazy, and a loneliness that drives you mad.

When Natsu left, he didn't think that he was leaving behind people who didn't know how to be without him. He leaves, but he never really goes.

She twirls the spoon in her coffee idly, watching the rain fall outside the window.

Numb is how she feels. Night terrors and blank stares and a failing memory, whispers of 'depression', insistences of therapy, so many people worried about her but they aren't who she wants and they aren't who she needs. Numb, and thank God for it. Because the hurt never goes away.

It hurts, and she breathes. It hurts, and she curls up in an empty bed. It hurts, and she squeezes the blankets harder between her fingers, tighter in her fists. It hurts, and it hurts, and it never, ever, ever stops hurting.

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 _i taste you on my lips and i can't get rid of you..._  
 _you're worse than nicotine._

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 **notes—** Yes, hello, hi. This is unusual for me because I rarely leave long notes on my fics, especially for ones as short as this. But I do have some things to say about this, so if you're up for indulging me, thank you. (If not, sorry!—of course, you're more than welcome to ignore this entirely.) Firstly, apologies for any glaring mistakes you found while reading — I wrote this just now in one sitting and I don't have the heart to re-read it. Obviously, it deals with very sensitive subject material, and while I wanted to go about it delicately, at the same time, I'd rather be blunt and realistic about it. So, I'm afraid I did sacrifice some elegance in trying to be truthful.

Some of the things mentioned in here are highly personal, so it was cathartic in a sense to write it all out. Different people deal with loss in different ways; some, like Erza, march forward, determined to be undaunted (the extent to which that is authentic or a guise, of course, is up to your own deductions); some, like Gray, retreat in on themselves, and cut off from that previous life entirely; others, like Wendy, internalise to the point of numbness; and of course, there's Lucy, who suffers from night terrors and an inability to heal. Or, rather, a static longing wherein she can't move forward, but can't go back to the way things were before.

It was critical for me to ask 'why', and in the end, to leave that question up to you. It's heartbreaking but true that some things just never make sense, and some questions never have answers; the people you thought would be the least likely to do something can surprise you, and denial and shock come hand in hand more often than not (in my experience). I wanted to paint Natsu as the positive person he is in canon, but also with a plethora of hidden demons that we really never get to see. And it is the utter surprise — that blind-sided aspect to his death — that accompanied what happened to him here which I think is so vital for me to focus on.

This wasn't a happy piece at all, but I felt it important to write about the darkest times after such a huge part of your life is ripped away, and in such a bitter, painful way. There _is_ healing after things like this, but that's not what this fic is about: I wanted to make that clear. This is about the aftermath; about the fall.

If you did read this long-winded author's note, thank you, and I hope you could somehow gain something from reading this. If not, sorry for wasting your time, aha~. I'd love to hear any thoughts or feedback you might have. Thank you, again, for reading. Bye for now.

 _ **Warnings:** major character death, suicide mention, night terrors._


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